Alastair Reynolds's Blog, page 34

Ender's Game (Gavin Hood, 2013)

Feeling the need for some space-based entertainment I caved in and bought the DVD of Ender's Game. I had not seen the film when it was released, and have read neither the Orson Scott Card novel nor the original, much-praised short story from which it was expanded. That said, it is impossible to exist in the SF world and not pick up the gist of the plot by osmosis. I had also read the sequel, Speaker to the Dead, during my student years, and rather enjoyed it at the time, although I don't reca...

The Quantika Trilogy

Later this year, a strikingly ambitious hard SF trilogy will reach its conclusion with the publication of the final volume. If I told you that the series features convincingly rendered exoplanetary locales, vast and perplexing alien artefacts, fractious political tensions between human explorers and settlers, plausibly extrapolated future technologies, a deft grasp of biology and physics, but also elegant writing, strongly evoked characters, and an immersive sense of place, then you'd probabl...

500 words

A couple of weeks ago I spent a day at my old school - Pencoed Comprehensive, near Bridgend - talking to students about creative writing. Part of the focus was on the BBC's "500 words" short story competition, which is currently running:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00rfvk1

Although I'm a little too old to enter the competition myself, I felt it would be a fun and instructive exercise to see what I could do given the same word-length constraint. I've done some vignettes before, but other th...

M42

A recent spell of clear skies had me returning to my lapsed interest in astrophotography. I've had the same telescope since about 1997 - a 9.25 inch Celestron Ultima - and while it doesn't have all the computerised bells and whistles of a modern GoTo scope, it serves me well and does everything I want it to. I don't have a dome or anything, so my scope has to live with me in my office until it's time to go and look at the stars. That means hefting the scope and tripod out in separate trips, b...

Asimov's Science Fiction - January 2015

I’ve never pretended to keep up with the short fiction field inside science fiction – let alone the all-encompassing genre of the fantastic – but there was a time when I did at least read all the magazines to which I subscribed, and also made an effort to digest the contents of the various Year’s Best anthologies when they came round. When I first subscribed to Interzone, a staggering thirty years ago, it was no problem at all to read each issue before the next arrived. I was a s...<![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]>

National Autistic Society

This saturday (17th January) I'll have the pleasure of speaking at AutismCon, the day-long Festival of the Mind organised by the National Autistic Society. The event takes place at Conway Hall, in central London. I'll be taking part in a panel discussion about science fiction, and speaking for about fifteen minutes about my own relationship to SF. The panel's scheduled to take place between 1.45 and 2.45, although it might be an idea to check the times on the day.

From the website:

"AutismCon...

Christmas University Challenge

Viewers in the UK should be able to catch me as part of the Newcastle team on tonight's edition of Christmas University Challenge.

BBC2 7.30pm - see how we did against Hull!

Edits in

Just a minor update to say that I completed the first substantial round of editorial revisions on the new book, which now has a title that editor, publisher, marketing and author are all now happy with - but I'll wait until there's some sort of formal announcement before unleashing it on the world. There are still a few hurdles to be jumped before the book goes into production, but in the meantime I am now moving forward with the next big project, while also finding time for a bit of short fi...

Novel delivered

If I've not had much to say here in recent months, it's not because I haven't been busy. In truth, 2014 has been one of the most productive years of my writing life, but other than offering a series of endless progress reports on steadily increasing word counts, I don't find that there's much to say about being in the act of producing another book. Put simply, it's not very exciting. I start my day, I produce my intended wordage, I back up and switch off my computer - and then repeat for eigh...

New stories

While I continue work on the new novel, just time to mention a couple of new fiction items that are available online for free.

Back in June, I was pleased to be given the chance to write a piece of short fiction for something a bit out of the ordinary. The piece was slated to be part of a scientific press release, centred around the announcement of some exciting work done by astronomers at Queen Mary (University of London). Guillem Anglada-Escude and his team were reporting on a striking disco...